Lake George, 1872

Lake George, 1872, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is among Kensett's final completed canvases, painted during the last summer before his death in December of that year. Lake George in upstate New York had been a subject for Hudson River School painters since the early nineteenth century — Thomas Cole and others had depicted it as a landscape of sublime natural beauty within easy reach of New York City's growing wealth. Kensett returned to it repeatedly through his career, each time simplifying his approach further toward the extreme reduction of his final years. These late paintings are now recognized as among the most radical American landscape works of the nineteenth century for their near-abstract simplicity.

Oil on canvas with the horizontal simplicity of Kensett's Luminist maturity — the lake extending to a distant low shore, sky occupying half or more of the canvas, the water's glassy surface reflecting the light above. The handling is smooth and unobtrusive, the paint thin, the brushwork self-effacing in service of the luminous atmospheric effect.